War clouds refuse to disperse a year after Georgia waged war against Russia.
On the anniversary of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's ill-fated
invasion of South Ossetia 8 August, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev warned:
"Georgia does not stop threatening to restore its 'territorial integrity' by
force. Armed forces are concentrated at the borders near Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, and provocations are committed," including renewed Georgian shelling of
the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.

What is the result of the Ossetia fiasco? Did Russia "win" or "lose"? Has it
put paid to NATO expansion? What lessons did Saakashvili and his Western
sponsors learn? Analysts have been sifting through the rubble over the past few
weeks.

Some, such as Professor Stephen Blank at the US Army War College, dismiss any
claim that Russia was justified in its response, that "even before this war
there was no way Georgia was going to get into NATO." He insists that Russia
lost, that its response showed Russian military incompetence and weakness,
resulting in huge economic losses, with the EU now seeking alternative energy
sources and the US continuing to resist Russian sensitivities in its "near
abroad". Georgetown University Professor Ethan Burger compared the situation to
"Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia", with the US playing the role of plucky
Britain facing the fascist hordes. Apparently Burger sees the Monroe Doctrine as
a one-way street. Tell that to the Hondurans.

Indeed, the Russian military is a shadow of its former Soviet self, as is
Russia itself, having been plundered by its robber barons and their Western
friends over the past 20 years. Although the Georgian army fled in disarray,
"major deficiencies in operational planning, personnel training, equipment
readiness and conducting modern joint combat operations became evident," though
"it proved that it remains a viable fighting force," writes Vladimir Frolov at

And the West, angry at the de facto Russian "win" in Ossetia, pulled
out many stops to undermine the Russian economy afterwards. Beside the $500
million military operation itself, "capital flight" reached $10 billion and
currency reserves decreased by $16 billion. Overall, it is estimated that the
war cost Russia $27.7 billion.

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Other analysts, such as German Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) analyst
Alexander Rahr, see the war as ablip in East-West relations. "The West
has forgotten the Georgian war quickly. Georgia and Saakashvili are not
important enough to start a new Cold War with Russia. The West needs Moscow's
support on many other issues, like Iran. The West is not capable of solving the
territorial-ethnical conflicts in the post-Soviet space on its own. The present
status quo suits everyone." He even predicts that if Moscow decides to stay in
Sevastopol after 2017, "there will be no conflict over this issue with the
West."

Sergei Roy, editor of the Russian Guardian, notes that the conflict
produced "greater clarity or, to use a converse formula, less indeterminacy both
in the international relations and domestically". He recalls that Putin tried to
reach Bush on the hotline established for precisely such crises. "There simply
was no response from the other side. Dead silence," a definite sign of that
other side's "direct complicity in Saakashvili's bloody gamble." Roy mourns that
superpower rivalry is alive and well, though "Russia, has done everything it
realistically could (ideologically, politically, militarily, economically,
culturally) to embrace and please the West. Everything, that is, except
disappearing entirely. But disappear it must."

Roy is referring to the overarching US/NATO plans to promote instability and
disintegration throughout the former Soviet Union (and not only).The strategy is
Balkanisation of the Caucasus (Dagestan, Chechnya and other autonomous regions),
with the same strategy applicable to Iran, Iraq and China. The principle being,
"Don't fight directly, use secessionist movements within your adversary to
weaken him." Though on the back burner as a result of the Ossetia setback, the
US has been perfecting this strategy for decades now, most infamously in
Yugoslavia, sometimes by direct bombing and invasion, sometimes by bribery,
NGOing and colour revolutions.

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While Western media accuses Russia of doing this in Georgia, South Ossetia
and Abkhazia are best viewed as stop-gap entities asserting Russian hegemony in
a world of US-sponsored pseudo-democracies. A new, more sober Georgian political
regime which recognises the situation for what it is and establishes a
pragmatic, even cooperative relationship with Russia could probably negotiate
some kind of compromise within the Commonwealth of Independent States, though
according to leader of the Georgian Labour Party Shalva Natelashvili, "dozens of
Latin American states, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Ecuador and others,
intend to recognise Abkhazia and so-called South Ossetia.While our poor
president is busy preserving his throne, Georgian disintegration continues and
deepens."

The war certainly destroyed any prospects of Georgia's membership in NATO
(which were very real, despite Blank's denial). However, NATO plans for Georgia
and Ukraine stubbornly proceed apace. Ex-deputy assistant secretary of state for
European and Eurasian affairs Matt Bryza brought Saakashvili $1 billion as his
parting gift to rebuild tiny Georgia's military in conformity to NATO
specifications. Oh yes, and to train Georgian troops bound for Afghanistan. In
other words, to prepare Georgia for incorporation into US world military
strategy, whether or not as part of NATO. After all, Columbia isn't part of NATO
and is getting the same red carpet treatment, a conveniently placed ally in the
US feud with Venezuela. Perhaps NATO's Partnership for Peace can do the trick
with Georgia.

The new Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian
Affairs, Tina Kaidanow, explained her qualifications for US-sponsored
Balkanisation in April: "I worked in Serbia, in Belgrade and in Sarajevo, then
in Washington, and I went back to Sarajevo and am now in Kosovo." Andrei
Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation, warned on
PanArmenian.net that her
new appointment "is an attempt to give a second wind to the politicisation of
ethnicity in the North Caucasus with the possibility of repeating the 'Kosovo
scenario'." The US will simply continue its double standard of recognising
Kosovo's secession while arming Georgia and Azerbaijan to overturn the
independence of Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh and South Ossetia -- none of which
"seceded" from anything other than new post-Soviet nations they never belonged
to.

All this petty intriguing masks a much more important result of the Russian
response to last summer's provocation. Very simply, Russian resolve prevented a
1914-style descent into world war. This time, quite possibly a nuclear war,
especially in light of Russia's much taunted military weakness in relation to
the US. A desperate nation will pull out all the stops when backed to the wall,
which is where the US and its proxy NATO have positioned Russia. "Had Russia
refrained from engaging its forces in the conflict, the nations of the northern
Caucasus would have serious doubts about its ability to protect them. This would
in turn lead to an array of separatist movements in the northern Caucasus, which
would have the potential to start not only a full-scale Caucasian war, but a new
world war," according to Andrei Areshev.

Plans for carving up Russia by employing Yugoslav-style armed secessionist
campaigns were laid out in 1999 when the conservative Freedom House thinktank in
the United States founded the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, with
members including Zbigniew Brzezinski and neocons Robert Kagan and William
Kristol, according to Rick Rozkoff at globalresearch.ca. This
frightening group has now morphed into the American Committee for Peace in the
Caucasus "dedicated to monitoring the security and human rights situation in the
North Caucasus."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently confirmed that plans around
last August's war were on a far larger scale than merely retaking South Ossetia
and later Abkhazia, that Azerbaijan was simultaneously planning for a war
against Armenia, a member of the Russian-sponsored Collective Security Treaty
Organisation. NATO-member Turkey could well have intervened at that point on
behalf of Azerbaijan, and a regional war could have ensued, involving Ukraine
(it threatened to block the Russian Black Sea fleet last summer) and even Iran.
Ukraine has long had its eyes on pro-Russian Transdniester. It doesn't take much
imagination to see how this tangled web could come unstuck in some Strangelovian
scenario.

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Just as the origins of WWI are complex, but clearly the result of the
imperial powers jockeying for power, the fiasco in Georgia can be laid squarely
at the feet of the world's remaining imperial superpower. The mystery here is
the extent of Russian forebearance, the lengths that Russia seems willing to go
to accommodate the US bear. Over the past decade, Russia watched while the US
and NATO attacked Yugoslavia, invaded Afghanistan, set up military bases
throughout Central Asia, invaded Iraq, assisted regime collapse/ change in
Yugoslavia, Georgia, Adjaria, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, and schemed to push Russia
out of the European energy market. The question is not why Russia took military
action but why it hasn't acted more decisively earlier.

And, now, why it has given the US and NATO carte blanche in
Afghanistan. The US continues to strut about on the world stage and, with its
Euro-lackeys, to directly threaten Russia with war and civil war, taking time
out to sabotage its economy when it pleases. Its plans for Afghanistan as a key
link in its world energy supplies (which could, of all goes well, exclude
Russia) are well known. The Russians are also not unaware of evidence of US
complicity in the production and distribution of Afghanistan's opium, even as
the US piously claims to be fighting this scourge. Sergei Mikheev, a
vice-president of the Centre for Political Technologies, said, "NATO's operation
in Afghanistan is dictated by the aspiration of the US and its allies to
consolidate their hold on this strategically and economically important region,"
which includes Central Asia. He criticised Russian compliance with US demands
for troop and materiel transport. According to Andrei Areshev, "Russia's
position on this issue has not been formulated clearly."

More ominous yet, writes Sergei Borisov in Russia Today, the operation
in Afghanistan is "a key element of the realisation of the project of
transforming the alliance into an alternative to the UN." While the original
invasion of Afghanistan was rubber-stamped by the UN, it was carried out by the
US and NATO, and the UN has been merely a passive bystander ever since. NATO is
being transformed from a regional organisation into a global one: "If the norms
of international laws are violated, then with time the Afghan model may be
applied to any other state."

Eric writes for Al-Ahram Weekly and PressTV. He specializes in Russian and Eurasian affairs. His "Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games" and "From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization" are available at (more...)